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SirsiDynix Announces General Availability of SchoolRooms 3.0

New release sets standard for educational discovery platform

Provo, Utah, October 1, 2009 – SirsiDynix®, the global leader in library technology solutions, announces the release of SchoolRooms™ 3.0. Designed to meet both state and federal education standards, SchoolRooms promotes exploration, discovery and learning to engage both the reluctant and the studious learner. From a single interface, students can access library resources, online databases, and approved web content alongside new and past curriculum specifically created for SchoolRooms users. With powerful new administration tools that allow teachers and librarians to customize and adapt the product to meet the needs of students and parents SchoolRooms brings new meaning to the term user-friendly.

Organized by subject, SchoolRooms offers an affordable alternative to expensive supplements and remediation materials. Content is presented in virtual rooms to help students discover information, provide educators with access to quality materials, and enable parents to find appropriate resources for improving their children’s education.

New ELL Tools and Health Content. This release includes the addition of three highly anticipated new rooms. Our Health Room provides teachers and parents with tools to meet the changing physical needs of today’s students. Our new World Languages Room, includes tools for students learning to communicate in this global world. Finally, our ELL Educator, provides a tool students can use to learn English for the classroom and social environment, step by step.

Focused Discovery. Libraries can define custom search limits for use within specific profiles. These limits allow students and parents to focus searches on records or documents that match an enormous range of possible attributes including content source, location, language, reading level, and format.

Powerful Administration Tools. SchoolRooms can have a footprint as small as a search box widget, or it can serve as a full library web presence and content management system. With enhanced administration tools, multiple languages, and configurable themes, teachers and librarians can customize and adapt the product to tailor the experience for individual user needs.

Because all of this is configurable through an administrative user interface, there is no need to edit files on the server or worry about whether customizations will be preserved through upgrades. Library administrators have the ability to configure all of the following according to local needs:

Content Management: Libraries that use the content management features can select which content is available to specific profiles and use both a WYSIWYG interface for editing and creating content or a built-in HTML editor.

Look and feel: Libraries can upload their own headers, footers, and navigation panels. They can also upload their own cascading style sheets to control fonts, colors, backgrounds, and layout.

Authentication: Libraries can decide whether or not authentication is required for a given profile and whether to use LDAP or the ILS user repository.

Available content: In consortia, not all members have the same content subscriptions. Profiles allow configuration for individual members.

Reporting: With built-in Google Analytics, libraries will have unprecedented visibility into the usage trends of their SchoolRooms 3.0 discovery tool.

Search Displays: Libraries can select which fields appear in search results and detail displays as well as the arrangement and behavior of those fields.

“SchoolRooms offers the right technology for long term growth and innovation. We’ve built it from the ground up using web services. This gives us almost unlimited flexibility to integrate with other systems and build on the strength of our current offering,” said Talin Bingham, chief technology officer for SirsiDynix.

SirsiDynix is the global leader in strategic technology solutions for libraries – vital institutions whose primary mission is to assist people in discovering and using knowledge, resources and other valuable content for their educations, jobs and entertainment. In concert with key industry partners, SirsiDynix supports this strategic role for libraries by offering a comprehensive integrated suite of technology solutions that improve the internal productivity of libraries and enhance their capacity to partner with their communities through the provision of state of the art library management systems (LMS) and search and discovery solutions. SirsiDynix serves approximately 4,000 libraries and consortia that provide services to over 300 million people through more than 20,000 library outlets in the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. For more information, please see www.sirsidynix.com.